I am looking to expand the role my hosting server plays and am after a bit of help.

Currently, I have one server running WHM and hosting domain websites. The server does not host dns or emails. Just websites. So at the domain registrar for all those domains, I point website A records (@ and www) to my server's public IP.

What I would like to do is convert my server to a "nameserver" so at the domain registrar for all those domains, I can just set the nameservers as ns1.mydomain.com and ns2.mydomain.com. That way, my servers control DNS, correct?

I realise I need two servers to register them as nameservers with two different public IPs. Some of my questions are:

Does ns2 need to be running WHM as well once it's set up?

Does ns2 need to be a duplicate of ns1? As in also host website files in case ns1 goes offline? If so, how do I keep replication automated?

Would I need to set the "nameserver 1" and "nameserver 2" boxes in WHM to ns1.mydomain.com and ns2.mydomain.com because now, they don't really have anything set as they don't host DNS so they don't do anything.

Which DNS type is best to use in WHM? Currently in my setup it's set to "No DNS". I believe "Bind" is the default.

2) Mismatched NS records
WARNING: One or more of your nameservers did not return any of your NS records.

3) DNS servers responded
ERROR: One or more of your nameservers did not respond:
The ones that did not respond are: xxx.xxx.xxx.100 xxx.xxx.xxx.200

4) Missing nameservers reported by your nameservers
You should already know that your NS records at your nameservers are missing, so here it is again: ns1.mydomain.com
ns2.mydomain.com

5) SOA record
No valid SOA record came back!

That's it. As far as I could tell, I've done everything right. Could this be a problem at the registrar for mydomain.com? Because when I asked them to register my 2 nameservers, it seems like they did not know what I meant and only created A records for ns1 and ns2, but I could be wrong.

1) Go to InterNIC | Whois , check if your NS were registered properly and pointing to your DNS cluster
2) Check BIND is running and you can connect to port 53 from outside to your server
3) You may login to your domain registrar control panel and update all of your domains with the new NS .

Hello, It's now working! Thanks to syslint! Not one of the articles mentioned opening port 53! I even went over them again to check I didn't miss anything. As soon as I opened the port, everything started working as intended and intoDNS has no more errors.